


black pearls

by pumpkinpaperweight



Series: mythical creatures au [2]
Category: The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani
Genre: F/F, F/M, side nicatha which no one seems to have ever considered for some weird reason, some vague mentions of violence and gore but that's it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25072921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinpaperweight/pseuds/pumpkinpaperweight
Summary: agatha fakes her death (again.) tedros tries to get his head around human courtship. you know how it is. when you're immortal, you have to make your own fun.
Relationships: Agatha/Nicola (The School for Good and Evil), Agatha/Tedros (The School for Good and Evil)
Series: mythical creatures au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815847
Comments: 15
Kudos: 72





	black pearls

**(Portsmouth, England, 1888)**

It is a stormy night when Duchess Ashby’s lover is murdered. 

Tedros likes storms. No one comes to the sea when it’s stormy. He can sit on the rocks and pet the seals.

And watch a murder. 

A man, presumably the Duke, stands on the clifftop with his pistol angled at Captain Graves’s head. His wife is a little further back from the edge of the cliff, held back by the Duke's men. She is not crying, but she is very still and tense. 

For her credit, though, the Captain doesn’t appear afraid. She stands with her hands in the pockets of her breeches, her greatcoat snapping around her legs, and watches the Duke.

“I have nothing to say to you, scoundrel.” says the Duke, loading and cocking his gun. 

The Captain’s face is mostly shadowed by her hat, but it’s clear she’s grinning. 

“You had plenty to say last week, your grace.”

The Duke’s nostril’s flare, but other than that he doesn’t take the bait. He’s resolved to kill her, so he clearly feels he has no reason to respond. Tedros puts his chin on his tail, somewhat invested. He does not properly understand what they are saying, but emotions are clearly running high. 

“Any last words?” asks the Duke.

The Captain’s eyes shift to the Duchess. 

“Nicola?” she says. 

The Duchess looks tersely back at her. 

“Yes?”

“You will address my wife by her  _ title, witch _ .” snarls the Duke. The other woman raises her hands in surrender. 

“...ma’am, then. I wish that you would take this.” 

She reaches into her pocket and produces something. It’s shiny, but Tedros cannot see it well enough to work out what it is. Some kind of human trinket. Sparkly. 

The Duchess looks at the men holding her. The Duke sneers, but he gives them a signal to release her. Nicola rushes forward, breathless, and takes whatever it is into her hands. 

The Duke is on the wrong side, so he doesn’t see the Captain’s other hand slip something else into Nicola’s pocket. 

“A necklace will make no difference, once you are dead.” the Duke scoffs. 

“Perhaps it will.” says the Captain, letting Nicola clutch her hands. “Or perhaps it will not. Let go of me now, ma’am.”

Nicola hesitates, looking between her husband and her lover. Then she looks down at the necklace in her grip.

With shaking hands, she releases the other woman’s hands-- but not before she grabs her collar and kisses her. 

The Captain kisses her back, for a brief moment, before breaking away and gently pushing her backwards. 

Tedros hisses to himself, lashing his tail through the water. That is not fair. He does not like that, no, he does not...

This time, the Duchess doesn’t resist, stumbling back to her husband. The Duke does not look angry. He knows there’s nothing his wife can do about what’s about to happen. 

He raises the pistol and smiles at the Captain. 

“Leave us.” he says to his men, who troop obediently away down the hill. No witnesses to report an unfair duel. Then he turns to his opponent. “I’d say prepare to meet your maker, but I don’t think you believe in God, do you?”

“Oh, I am sure that I shall meet someone.” says the Captain, pushing her hat back so she can look the Duke dead in the eye, and stepping back to stand on the very edge of the cliff. Tedros cackles softly, preparing to push off the rock. 

The Duke hesitates, taken aback--

The Captain smiles, exposing long, sharp canines-- too long, too sharp. 

Panicked, the Duke fires, Nicola screams, Tedros slides off the rock into the water, and--

The Captain laughs as she falls. 

* * *

Part two of the plan is easy enough.

Agatha is holding herself underwater when Tedros gets there, dragging his replacement with him. Agatha frowns when she sees it. Tedros bares his teeth at her. He knows it does not look  _ exactly _ like her, but he does not like killing humans which look like her. Besides, the fall would have disfigured a normal human, the hair is the right colour, and there is blood where there should be blood. Tedros ripping hearts out might leave a bigger wound than being shot, but it wasn’t as if anyone was going to look too closely, let alone retrieve the body from one of the most treacherous parts of the bay.

Agatha rolls her eyes and offers the coat and hat she had stripped off. Sulkily, Tedros shoves them onto the replacement and lets the body drift up to the surface. Agatha holds out her hand to him, and he takes it, swimming them out a short way to return to his rock--

Just in time to see the Duchess shooting her husband.

The Duke crumples, a hole blasted in his chest, and Nicola turns to look over the cliff again-- she’s already noticed the body.

But she doesn't  _ look _ at the body-- she looks at them, even though she conceivably shouldn’t be able to see them. 

She smiles, curtsies, and turns to walk away. 

“You made this.” says Tedros solemnly. It’s all wrong-- oh, how he  _ hates _ human languages-- but Agatha understands him anyway.

“Yes. I arranged with the Duchess that I would help her kill her husband if she helped me fake my death.” says Agatha, digging her thumb into the new hole in her sternum, trying to extract the bullet. There is no blood, because she has none. “The necklace was a cover for me to hand over the gun. It looks as if myself and the Duke both died in a duel. It is an amicable parting between us.”

Tedros watches Nicola leave, the necklace from Agatha now glimmering around her throat. He frowns. 

“I do not understand.”

“What do you not understand?” asks Agatha, finally extracting the bullet and flicking it away into the water with a  _ ping.  _ It hasn’t penetrated very far. Agatha is much more durable than humans. 

Tedros frowns at her. She has lipstick on her teeth. 

“What was… it?” he puts his hands around his throat. 

“The necklace?” interprets Agatha. “It was just a token. Something for her to remember me by.”

Tedros looks blankly at her. 

“You must notice that the humans you kill often wear rings. They are a similar idea.”

Tedros squints, thinking back.

“The circles? Fingers?”

“That is correct.”

Tedros is struggling to make the connection. The only real link he can see between any of these is that they are shiny. He supposes human courtship must involve shiny things. They are like mermaids. How funny.

Agatha looks up at the sky, where the pinkish tint of dawn is starting to appear alongside the storm clouds. 

“We should go. People will be here soon.”

Tedros, who thinks lots of people being exposed on the cliffs sounds very tasty, hesitates, but Agatha yanks one of his fins. 

“Come. We can return to your court. Beatrix wishes to ask me about human things.”

Tedros sighs, but he slings her onto her back anyway, and he only hesitates a second before pitching himself off the rock into the stormy sea.

* * *

Tedros is thinking. 

Sprawled out on a rock in the middle of the bay, he swallows the rest of his heart and shakes himself, picking muscle from his teeth and eyeing his most recent victim. Another shark attack for the humans to bewail, oh yes. Very dangerous sharks here, at this time. 

He looks up at the beach, where he can see Agatha sitting in the shade of a cave on the deserted cove, avoiding her detested sunlight. The Sophie-Queen is standing at the mouth of the cave, probably demanding to know what happened last night. He scowls and turns over. He does not like the Sophie-Queen. She does not share her faeries, though their hearts are delicious, and he does not think she is very nice to Agatha. The  _ mermaids _ love her because she uses a boring human-like glamour, so she is pretty, like them. The mermaids have slit pupils and slightly webbed hands, but everything else is as human as it gets. Since they do not have glamours, they need to appeal to humans  _ somehow _ . They also have much better command over human language than sirens, since they spend more time around humans and don’t kill them the second they get within reach. No wonder Sophie likes them better. 

He hears clicking behind him and turns lazily over to see Beatrix approaching him from the circle of his court, who are waiting a respectful distance away from him.

She stops and holds her arms wide-- the gesture of submission all Undersea Folk use, exposing their heart to their King-- before she scrabbles up onto his rock beside him. Some of the older sirens make disapproving noises, but Tedros does not mind. His mermaid sisters may be too nice to humans, but they are much easier to get along with than his temperamental kin in the sirens. 

“You are distracted.” she says, in English. Tedros snaps at her and she switches to their own language. 

“Reena saw you collecting pearls this morning.”

Tedros tries to bite her, she smacks him around the head, and they grapple for a moment before Beatrix slaps him on the back to indicate surrender. 

Tedros pauses, then barks at his court, who take the dismissal and disappear back into the sea, returning to their hunting.

“What does it matter to you?” he demands, letting her go. Beatrix smiles at him, combing her hair with her fingers. 

“I do not know what the Dead One would want with pearls.”

Tedros snarls at her, eyes shooting over to where Sophie and Agatha are. They are looking over, probably having noticed their scrap, but they will not be able to hear what they’re saying. And even if they did, it would just sound like clicks, to them.

“I know you are jealous of her Duchess.” continues Beatrix. “So you are trying to win her back over.”

“She may have as many human affairs as she wishes.” sniffs Tedros. “I do not care.”

“Yes, you do.” says Beatrix. “Besides, I have come to tell you that human courtship usually involves rings.”

Tedros fidgets with his dorsal fin. 

“I do not have rings.”

“So I see.” says Beatrix dryly, eyeing the fistful of pearls in his claw. “But I thought you should know before you start assuming every shiny thing carries the same importance.”

“I knew of that.” hisses Tedros, even though he did not. Beatrix smirks at him as he sifts nervously through his pile of pearls. 

“You should give them to her anyway.”

“I will choose the best one.” snaps Tedros. 

Beatrix clearly can tell he’s going to ignore her if she tries to talk anymore, so she smiles and leans back. 

“I am going to see Sophie-Queen, now.”

“Bite her for me.”

“I shall not.”

She rolls backwards off the rock and goes shooting off towards the shore. Tedros watches her go, picking nervously at the scales on his hips.

* * *

Tedros is not telling her something.

“ _ What?”  _ presses Agatha again. He has been acting off all night-- not saying much and making odd noises, swimming in circles around her. 

Tedros ducks back under the water and pops up a few feet away, then does it again, returning to hover slightly closer. He keeps baring his teeth, shaking himself and disappearing back under the water. If Agatha did not know better, she would think he was angry, but he has no restraint at all when he is angry. Besides, she does know better. He is not angry, he is embarrassed. 

Bewildered, she looks around, but they are most definitely alone. She can hear the mermaids shrieking and play fighting over on the other side of the bay. So…

She looks back around and finds that Tedros has snuck closer again, now lurking behind the rock next to hers. He can move silently if he likes, something that’s always been impressive to her. 

“ _ Tedros _ ,” she says, exasperated. “What is it that you want?”

Tedros growls again and goes to duck back under the water, but seems to think better of it. He hovers, only his eyes above the waterline, and Agatha resolves to wait it out. He is probably just trying to work out how to tell her he went and had a fight with Sophie, or something equally petty--

Then Tedros has appeared at her side, and is prising her fingers apart to shove something into her palm. Confused, Agatha looks down to find a shiny black pearl, of impressive size, deposited in her hand. Agatha wonders where he had found it, and she looks up to ask him--

The second they make eye-contact, Tedros clearly loses his nerve completely. He hisses, and hurls himself back into the water, spraying Agatha with salt-water and disappearing beneath the surface. 

Now even more confused, Agatha looks back at the pearls, glimmering faintly in the moonlight--

She is suddenly struck with the image of Tedros looking at the necklace she had given to Nicola. 

Oh. 

_ Oh.  _

He is trying to mimic human courtship.

She had thought she heard him hissing when Nicola had kissed her. 

He is  _ jealous.  _

She nearly laughs, looking at the little sphere in her hand. Not a bad gift.

She stands, scanning the water for him, but there is no sign. He does not hide well in the daylight, since he’s far too long and his gold scale makes him obvious, but at night his blue-black tail make him much harder to see--

No, never mind. He is over there.

Sighing, Agatha jumps down into the shallows and starts to wade her way across to the pile of seaweed, just on the shore. She can see his tail sticking out from under it. 

She reaches his seaweed pile and stands over it for a minute, waiting to see if he will emerge. He  _ must  _ have heard her approach, and he can definitely smell her. His senses are just as good as hers. Besides, all of the merfolk and sirens say she smells strongly of old blood. 

She is just trying to work out where his torso is so she can prod him in the ribs, when there is a rustling, and Tedros’s slit-pupilled eyes sheepishly appear.

“You are not very good at hiding.” says Agatha.

Tedros hisses at her and buries back under the seaweed. Agatha sighs. 

“Why are you embarrassed?” she asks, crouching down in front of him. 

There’s a pause. She can hear him clicking to himself. Then he says;

“It is all wrong.” 

He sounds sad. Agatha digs one of her fangs into her cheek, hard. She wants to laugh, but she knows she will upset him if he does. 

“What do you mean?”

“Beatrix tells me that every shiny thing not same meaning.” 

Agatha looks down at the pearl.

“I do not think it matters. When I was born, wedding rings were not particularly used. There are lots of ways to show love.”

She puts it carefully in her inside pocket--

Tedros grabs her around the knees and shoves her into the water. 

He often forgets that Agatha does not play-fight like seafolk do.

“Off, off,  _ off-- _ ” splutters Agatha as Tedros tries to shove her underwater, snarling excitedly and dotting random kisses on her face and neck. He is not listening properly, trying to pin her--

Agatha gives up and snarls at him, trying to bite him back, eventually succeeding in making him relent a bit, but his face is still very close to hers, and he is panting excitedly, pupils massive and expression eager.

Agatha kisses him. Tedros gets too excited and pushes her underwater, Agatha knees him and kicks at his dorsal fin, coughing, and they wrestle in the shallows until Beatrix comes to interrupt.

**Author's Note:**

> uhhh honestly I wrote this really fast but all I rly wanted to do was do more tedros pov which I did so??? we good sjhsjk. lmk what you thought, possibly this is a bit OOC hh


End file.
